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Craigslist Ghosting - Landlord Forum thread 213117

Craigslist Ghosting by Anonymous on December 4, 2010 @02:41

                              
The above person described it very well. You can see your ad but it does not index on the main page for others to see.

In addition to your e-mail, they will block your IP address.

In addition they have a new fun way to screw legitimate users. It's called "Geo Filtering." This takes your IP address location into account and will block you from posting out of your area. Especially if you have been blocked for other reasons.

I have multiple properties in multiple states and cities. It is becomming very difficult for me to post rental ads.

Also - DO NOT USE POST-ITS! I love them but CL considers the site as spam - that's what started my problems.

The good thing is this thread is great and I am saving it.

I am considering bringing a lawsuit against CL for unfair business practices by blocking me while allowing other realtors and PMs to post many times a day. They essentially have a monopoly on effective online classified.

Oh and you will LOVE this one - they blocked my legit rental ads - so just for the heck of it I posted a blatant (fake) prostitution ad in the personals section. (Very naughty girl seeking "generous men" for "good times." LOL) It posted immediately! (I even got a few replies before I pulled it a few minutes later. LOL)

I would really like to see their response when the media gets a hold of that - CL blocking legit businesses following the TOS, while STILL posting prostitution ads after promising numerous attorney generals they would stop.

Anybody want to join in a class action case? I see one coming.

[ Reply ] [ Return to forum ]

Re: Craigslist Ghosting by farouk (nj) on December 28, 2010 @20:11 [ Reply ]
I too am ready to file a law suit.. contact me and lets get this rolling farouk@ffreo.com
    Re: Craigslist Ghosting by Reggie (SC) on April 23, 2011 @01:26 [ Reply ]
    I'm all in for a lawsuit. Damn lawyers love class actions though,they'll take half the money.
    owensmarketinggroup....gmail.com
    Re: Craigslist Ghosting by Anonymous on December 16, 2011 @19:10 [ Reply ]
    You are both possibly uninformeds. Craigslist doesn't have to post your ad if they don't like it. You can't sue a company that won't run your free ad. What the eff is wrong with you people?

    "oh no - I didn't get my lollypop so I'm going to sue"

    You suck
      Re: Craigslist Ghosting by Anonymous on October 22, 2017 @03:41 [ Reply ]
      I think you are wrong. Ghosting amounts to what is known as an unfair business practice. It would be one thing if craigslist decided they don't want to run your ad and they told you as much so that people could be informed. But that is not what they are doing. They are tricking people into thinking they have ads that are running when really they don't. They even send out a confirmation letter telling you that your ad is running, and they even make a special link for you to view your ad - problem is that link is just to fool you as nobody else can see it. This is where it gets illegal... The fact that it is free has nothing to do with anything... They are using trickery and fraud and deceit. What if you are somebody that is down on your luck and you need cash really bad so you decide to sell a few item for cash. You post a few ads and get a confirmation email with a link to check your ad, so you check your ad and everything looks good. So you think you have an ad up, you've been told you have an ad up.... you have even looked at your ad just to triple check everything... because you are really counting on this. Like maybe you had a few items that you really didn't want to sell, and you have been kind of waiting for a rainy day, and now that day has come.
      What about some woman who has a few kids and the husband has died and out of sheer necessity they have to sell their dad's old antique car, or his vintage guitars, or his expensive golf clubs. Don't you think they would be counting on their ads being shown? Let me ask you something: Have you ever had an item for sale on craigslist and maybe it didn't sell right away (you don't get as many calls as you had hoped for)... so what do you do? Do you raise the price? No you don't raise the price do you? What do you forgeting do? You forgeting lower the price, right? Yeah that's right you forgeting lower the price. Well just imagine what someone could do with a list of all the ads that have been ghosted and have also been edited with a price drop??? You could take that list and call up people who are desperate for money and make low ball offers on their items for sale and really rip people off good -- because the people would not realize that their ad was not showing. If you had a couple of people call the unsuspecting seller you could convince them their items are really worth that much. So the widowed lady with the young kids who is selling off their dads items someone with a copy of the ghosted list could go and buy that stuff for 10 cents on the dollar. I think this is what is going on and it may not even be known to craigslist.... It could be simply some IT people who have access the to craigslist servers. In fact I believe I read that craigslist is served up on leased servers in cities all over the country; so it would make sense that there are people who would have access to the ghosted list.... as long as they just read only the files and do nothing destructive there would be no way of knowing who had access to the ghosted list. In fact craigslist may contractually agree to give read access to many people as they lease servers all around the country, and all it takes is for people to realize that the best deals you are ever going to find are in the ghosted items. You want a 1964 Corvette but you don't want to pay $50,000 for it? No problem ... find one on the ghosted list where the seller has lowered his price a couple times already. They you and a couple of your friends call the person at random times and tell the guys that prices for those cars have kind of fallen off lately. If all three of you tell the guy you saw his ad on craigslist he would never suspect he is being swindled.
      So the above is just one example of why Ghosting is totally illegal. It is so monumentally illegal. It is not only illegal - it is un-American. It is so wrong I cannot believe that anybody would think anything otherwise. It is not legal to bar somebody from a marketplace. I hope I have explained for you the basic principals that are envolved with this. Ghosting is illegal on many levels. For you to compare tricking someone into thinking they have ad ad showing to receiving a lollipop is ... well ... you do understand the difference I hope. A lollipop does not compare to people being set up to be swindled out of thousands of dollars.

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